Saturday, January 03, 2015

More Time Traveling: Santa Cruz in the 1930s and 1970s

The coming of the New Year forces us all to reflect on the passage of time. So it seems appropriate to share this clip I found of Santa Cruz, my hometown, from the 1930s.

As with the Nostalgia Train, it provides an intriguing glimpse into that era. The Boardwalk, wharf and beaches don't look drastically different, though. The changes are most evident in the cars that people drove, the clothes they wore and how white they all were. (I'm not sure how diverse the city was in that era, but it was a fairly small town. In the 1930s, Santa Cruz only had about 15,000 residents — a quarter of its current size.)

The water looked like it was still quite bracing, judging by how eager the swimmers are to get out of it.

I didn't expect to see the "Safety First" sign on the Giant Dipper roller coast, since I imagined that people in the 1930s lived in a perpetual death trap (and liked it that way).